


the seams had melted jagged

by besselfcn



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cole as a plot device, Hawke and Varric talk things out, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Finally, Hawke says, “Fuck is with that spirit friend of yours?”Varric grins. “Oh, him?” he says. “Yeah, he just takes your current most prominent pain and displays it for everyone to see.”“Oh, is that all?”“Yeah, that’s all.”“Great friend in a storm, that one.”“He also burns turnips.”
Relationships: Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91





	the seams had melted jagged

**Author's Note:**

> _I never like leaving Anders alone_ , Hawke says, and expects me not to run with that? Fool.

They--the Inquisition, broadly, minus Cullen at Varric’s request and Cassandra at Cassandra’s request--take Hawke out for drinks.

He’s more than happy to share tales of life in Kirkwall with those who are interested, which amounts mainly to the Inquisitor herself and sometimes Bull, when he gets to the bits like dueling with a Qunari and coming out the victor. Mostly he drinks, and laughs at _their_ own stories, and once tries to pay for everyone’s rounds despite being the guest of honor. 

Halfway into the night he asks, “Oh, sorry, I don’t think I caught your name at the beginning,” and everyone realizes Cole’s there.

“That’s Mister Creepy,” Sera informs him. 

“I’m Cole,” says Cole. “Sorry I made you forget. New people don’t like me much.”

Hawke tilts his head. Varric wonders what it feels like for mages; or humans, for that matter. Whether the part of them that taps into dreams can feel some slight wrongness in Cole. Can follow with their minds the thread that tethers him to not-quite-this-world and not-quite-the-other. 

After a moment, Hawke asks, “Are you a ghost?”

Cole looks away, as if he’s embarrassed.

“Wish he was,” Blackwall murmurs. “Be a lot less fuckin’ unsettling.”

Hawke cocks a half-smile. “What’s he do that’s unsettling?” he asks, because he always has to ask, because he’s Hawke, and Varric groans and puts his head in his hands. 

Cole sits up straighter and looks at Hawke. 

“Blood like a mirror glass, blood like a reflecting pool,” he says, starting slowly, and then faster. “Water’s pink, skin’s pale, water lilies full in bloom. Note on the sink, can’t read it now, burn it later. Never learned to heal, poured potions like the water, like the blood. Need him now to fix him, don’t know how to fix this, can’t let it happen like this now. I love him. Doesn’t he love me enough to--”

“ _Cole_.”

Cole stops; he shifts his eyes to Bull.

“That’s enough.”

Varric understands the old Dwarven saying now; falling into the sky. He feels his stomach doing it--rising in a tumble, like nausea but lighter. Hawke’s face is drained of color, and of emotion. He’s gone blank, the way he does when he wants no one to look at him and knows that everyone is. 

He clears his throat. “That is rather unsettling,” he concedes, and raises a glass with an almost imperceptibly trembling hand. 

“You get used to it,” Dorian says too-brightly, trying to saw through the thickening tension. “He’s got favorites. Quick, Cole, do the one about how my father would rather see me dead than an embarrassment.” 

Cole shrinks down, curling tighter around his mug. “Wrinkled frown, emerald-set staff, words like a waterfall rushing,” he murmurs, rocking himself like it’s a lullaby. He’s quiet enough Varric thinks the people at the opposite end of the table can’t even hear him. Varric can barely hear him, staring at Hawke as Cole drones on. _Cold eyes, cold like night time. Should’ve just made me Tranquil. He would’ve liked that, a son who only says yes sir…_

\---

Varric finds Hawke on the parapets later that night, staring out over the courtyard of Skyhold Keep.

“Figured you’d come looking for me,” Hawke says as Varric approaches. “Thought I’d make it easier on you.”

“Considerate,” Varric says. 

They stand there in silence. 

Varric’s good at an awkward silence. 

Hawke’s not; never has been. He sighs, takes a swig from the flask he’s brought up, and leans forward so he doesn’t have to look at Varric as he says, “I didn’t lie to you. He’s doing alright now.”

Varric exhales. He’s not _surprised_ \--he didn’t think Hawke would conveniently forget to mention Anders’s death, or that Hawke would even be _standing_ here right now if that were the case--but he feels the relief flood him, all the same. 

“The others know?” he asks. 

Hawke looks down at his hands. “Some of them,” he says. “Merrill came over, right afterwards. Wrote to Aveline couple days later instead of tearing my hair out. But that’s all. He didn’t--didn’t want me to tell anyone else. Not yet.”

Varric bites back the words he has rising on his tongue. Hawke must hear them anyway, because he continues, “I would’ve written to you. It’s just you seemed a bit busy saving the world. Again.”

That draws a laugh from Varric, surprising both of them. “Touche.”

“Seriously, don’t know how you get yourself into these messes,” Hawke murmurs. He finally pushes back off the parapet, starts pacing slowly the way he does when he’s thinking and trying not to think. 

So much of him is the same, Varric thinks. The weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders, even if that world is a little smaller now. 

“How else would I keep coming up with new novels?” Varric says, and Hawke lets himself have a smile. 

For a few moments all they hear is the sharp whip crack of the wind soaring past the tower walls and the distant crackling of a soldier’s fire, drowned out by the laughing voices that surround it. 

Finally, Hawke says, “Fuck is with that spirit friend of yours?”

Varric grins. “Oh, him?” he says. “Yeah, he just takes your current most prominent pain and displays it for everyone to see.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yeah, that’s all.”

“Great friend in a storm, that one.”

“He also burns turnips.”

Hawke stops his pacing for a moment and tilts his head to the side; Varric indicates the amount of information he has on the matter with a shrug. 

“Well,” Hawke says. “Guess he’s not the weirdest friend you’ve ever made.”

“Nowhere near.”

The wind; the crackling fire; the boisterous laughter of soldier’s voices, growing louder the longer the silence. 

“How long ago was it?” Varric asks, before he can think twice what he’s asking.

Hawke breathes. In, out, like he’s had to practice at it. “Three months,” he says. “It didn’t--I don’t think it had anything to do with the Conclave, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was just… he’d been struggling. And it just. It came to a head one day, he says. That’s all.”

Varric knows the look of a man with more to say, so he stays silent. He leans back against the wall and lets Hawke pace until the words loosen up. 

“I wasn’t even the one who found him,” Hawke whispers. “It was a serving maid, middle of the night. I wouldn’t have found him until morning.”

Varric doesn’t need Cole to hear the fear that seeps under Hawke’s words: _too late, again._

“That’s a heavy thing to carry around between just you and Aveline,” he says.

Hawke hums. “I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s not my burden.”

“Kid who reads your innermost thoughts seemed to think it was.”

Hawke looks at him then, desperately. It’s the way Hawke looks at most things. 

Varric remembers, then, the response to the letter he’d sent--a long letter, revealing what he’s been doing lately and where he is in an amount of detail he hadn’t yet felt safe penning directly to Anders’ residence. He’d tried his best to include the appropriate amount of urgency for someone who had already seen untold destruction and watched it turn out alright, along with a personal plea-- _Cassandra is going to kill me for this, and I’m still asking you to do it._

The response had been terse. _Be there in 3 days. Hawke._

He’s beginning to understand why.

“This the first time you’ve left him alone since?” Varric asks.

After a beat, Hawke nods. 

“You’re worried he’s going to do something stupid.”

Hawke scoffs. “No, I _know_ he’s going to do something stupid, I’m _worried_ he’s going to kill himself.”

He seems to regret it as soon as he’s said it, like speaking it will conjure it into existence. For a moment, he looks like what Varric knows he is: someone who’s lost too much to shoulder the thought of losing anything more.

“If he needs you at home, you can go,” Varric says gently. Which isn’t exactly fair to, say, the rest of the world--they need him now more than they ever did in Kirkwall. But Varric can’t bring himself to be the one to ask.

“No,” Hawke says, though, thank the Maker. “No, he’s okay. I know he’s okay. Merrill has some Dalish friends he’s staying with while I’m away.” He clears his throat. “They--they helped him. After. He stayed there for a couple of days. Until he felt safe coming home.”

Varric nods. “And he’s doing better now?”

“Yeah,” Hawke says. “He’s doing better now.”

Hawke’s pacing stops. He goes to the wall again and stares out, eyes tracing along the ridges of the mountains. Varric wonders sometimes how far you’d see--how far someone who wasn’t a dwarf would see--if they weren’t there. If you could see out to the storm coast from here. 

“He takes these herbs now,” Hawke says. “With salts or something. All crushed up into this awful smelling tea. But it’s--supposed to help. It does help. Makes the lows not so low. Highs not so high.”

“You don’t sound as pleased with that as it sounds like you would be,” Varric points out. 

Hawke shrugs. “It’s a kind of magic,” he says. “You get enough magic, you develop a resistance to it. I don’t know--I just don’t know where we’ll be. If that happens. When it happens.”

What he suspects Hawke means, really, is that he knows exactly where they’ll be, and that it starts with _blowing up_ and ends with _the Kirkwall Chantry._

“That’s not now,” Varric reminds him.

Hawke blinks. “No,” he agrees, and he stretches, rolls his shoulders like he’s shaking the thought right off of them. “No, that’s not now.”

He straights up again and turns to Varric, one elbow braced on the top of the wall, with a horrible, smug look on his face like Varric’s about to get one hell of a lecture. “What’s _now_ ,” he says, “is you’re working with _Cullen?_ Seriously?”

Ah, that one. It'd been coming. “I know,” Varric sighs.

“ _Cullen?_ ‘Ooh pardon me I didn’t notice my Knight-Commander was losing her fucking marbles ‘til she properly went rabid’ Cullen?”

“One and the same.”

“I’ll say it again; you’ve got a fucking way of making friends, Varric.”

“Clearly.”

Hawke pushes back and scoffs. “And that--the, the, what’s his name. The _Tevinter_ _magister_. Tell me I misheard his accent and you’re not working with a _Tevinter magister_.”

“He insists he’s not a magister,” Varric shrugs. “But he does have plenty of things to say about the _good_ kind of slaveholders.”

“Sweet Maker,” Hawke grumbles. “Should’ve asked Fenris to come with me after all, let him take that awful mustache off his face from the inside.”

Varric smiles. “I dunno,” he says. “I think you’d like him more than you think. He’s got the kind of tragic backstory you love to collect.”

Hawke kicks his shoe, and Varric laughs, and Hawke echoes it--and for a moment, it’s just the two of them again, wasting time drinking and talking and forgetting, for just a second, that they’re looking out over a city that needs them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Stained Glass by Danny Schmidt
> 
> Find me on twitter [@besselfcn](https://www.twitter.com/besselfcn)


End file.
